


Same As It Ever Was

by OrdinaryBird



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, ever write something so weird you don't know how to tag it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 21:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4114837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrdinaryBird/pseuds/OrdinaryBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I think someone fed it, and that’s why it stays. Or maybe it likes to hear me speak, maybe something in my voice tells it to stay."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same As It Ever Was

**Author's Note:**

> Remember that road we'd take?  
> Swear the devil's backbone would break?  
> We made it our home, and it's great, and it's good;  
> it's the same as it ever was.  
> \--Doomtree, "Team the Best Team"
> 
>  
> 
> [I...I don't even know.]

The child is staring.

There is a lot of waiting to do. Everything is happening right now, all the time, eternally. You know. We are surrounded in wool and my words, my voice, cleans and twists and refines its chaos into string, a linear progression from one end to another. 

They sent a message with this child. Usually they go away on their own. I think someone fed it, and that’s why it stays. Or maybe it likes to hear me speak, maybe something in my voice tells it to stay. 

I don’t dislike it. I’m not sure I like it either; it hasn’t said anything and its eyes are disquieting. But it’s just there now, and I’m not used to it there. I turn to that corner, I pause my verbal spinning and there it is. Where it does not belong.

I have a sense for things that do not belong. 

 

It is Laura who is feeding this child. I’m not sure why. I told her I don’t think it belongs, but she says nothing.

I am not sure how to describe Laura. The best I can think of is _intermediary_. But that gets to be a bit of a mouthful. Intermediary Laura. 

Yesterday she offered the child something to eat. It may have whispered _thanks_. It definitely moved its mouth. I wasn’t sure these children were capable of speech; this is the first time I’ve heard one. Even the messages they deliver are written words, because speech can be dangerous, it can be powerful, which is why this careful storytelling has been entrusted to me; I have been around, I respect this gift. 

This whisper is another reason to distrust the child.

 

She wants to name it.

“Laura,” I said. “These children all leave eventually, and who knows where they go? They are most likely not like us. You shouldn’t get attached.”

She was already attached, of course.

“Don’t get more attached than you already are,” I corrected, because accurate speech is important, because I may be working with them, after a fashion, but I will not be like them. I will not spin lies. “And stop giving it sweets.”

“He’s a boy,” she says suddenly. Laura conserves her words, and her voice startles me. The tone and pitch indicate...displeasure. “I asked him. Don’t call him ‘it’.”

“He spoke to you?”

“He’d talk to you too if you didn’t look at him like that.”

“I don’t trust it, Laura.”

“ _Him_.” Her intensity concerns me. It concerns me greatly.

“I meant the situation, not the child,” I said. “He came from them, didn’t he? He is one of theirs. They lie and take things and break things and then look away from the wreckage. What if he’s here to do their bidding?”

“I’ve seen him before. Not before he came here, but he seems to--slip right into the things that came before, like there is a place for him.” She runs her fingers through her hair. She is shaking. “The words they gave us aren’t sufficient. Do you take my meaning? Look for him.” 

I have, until this point, trusted Laura. Perhaps another intermediary would be useful. I should at least look.

 

I think I’m adjusting to this child. He does not startled me as much as he did, and I expect to see him in his corner when I look over. I have gotten several single-word responses from him (“yes”, “please”, “wait”), and he at least seems polite.

I have decided that a wary attachment is safe. The child has been much the same since he appeared, but the message scratched onto his cheek has scabbed and peeled. I am still not sure what to make of him. 

Twice, I have caught Laura embracing the child, and her eyes are glossy and distant when she does, and then she looks at me like she expects criticism, and more importantly, that she will not accept the criticism. I have said nothing about it. I will give Laura the freedom to choose her own fate. 

However, I did give the child a peppermint, and did not panic when his cold little fingers brushed mine. 

Laura was right about at least one thing. I have seen this child, now, he has crept into my thread. Their dull, downcast eyes did not perceive him properly; I think they can only see one when at a time. 

I felt something, as he said the Earth was not an “ownable thing”, that this was not theirs, and that feeling was pride. If he comes from them, he will learn from me, and he does not remember their fallacies.

He sits as he always does, in his corner, and he may be trying to smile. It is possible he isn’t sure which muscles to move yet to achieve that. 

 

The thick clumps of Happening that are, metaphorically, everywhere have already included this detail, but I am practicing a linear narrative, I’m trying to create a string they can follow, and so I should report that this is the when where the child first spoke a full sentence (“What are you talking to?”). I invited the child to approach me.

“Do you know what time is?” I asked. 

He shook his head. He continued to stare.

“One thing it does is catalogue what happens. You can put things in boxes of equal size. There’s a small box, a second, and you can fit sixty of those boxes into another box, called a minute. Do you remember yesterday?”

He nodded.

“Do you remember tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“How do you know what ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ are if you don’t know what time is?”

“You’re going to have told me?” 

I am satisfied with this answer. In this regard, the child is not unlike Laura and I. In this regard, the child is unlike the outsiders.

 

A name has dropped into place for this child. I did not know it before. I have always known it. I am fairly certain that Laura did not name him. He is not still anymore, and he has figured out how to smile, although one side of his face manages it before the other. He wants to be helpful, and makes a better intermediary than Laura. He does not hate them like we do. He barely fears them.

He says they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t see what will have been. He apologizes for them and thinks we should try to explain more. He thinks we can make them see what is, not just what was, the seconds skittering by.

Laura and I know what will happen. We are appropriately silent in our fear. Sometimes I think the child is pretending he does not see it. I ask him myself and he talks about other things, he avoids my eyes, he smiles unevenly. He talks so much, now, I think he is trying to drown out the noises that are to come. I string together short, even, honest sentences, and he takes my words and weaves them, creates lovely inaccuracies and deceptive corners to hide things in.

I did not see this coming. I have always known this would be.

 

He spoke today, and he grew angry. Perhaps with them. Perhaps just generally. There are spaces of time he can’t see, and I have told him what has happened in those times, where he was, and it made him very angry.

He told the story, and then kept talking, kept moving things, spoke in smooth and authoritative tones, and things shifted around him, I felt the words become almost real, partial truths. I did not like this. I did not like it, but I respected it, because this boy has one weapon and he has sharpened it when they weren’t looking, he uses it to force their eyes up to the hills and then down in shame, and they don’t even think to question it. They may not remember sending him.

He is a good boy.

We will be punished. But I find it hard to be concerned. Sometimes when you know your fate all you have is the last kick at your oppressor before everything goes black.

 

Everything did not go black, it went white, we are being washed away and it’s cold, we’re cold--

the sun is gone and we are so cold

it’s cold and empty and all is lost.  
Greetings  
from Night Vale.


End file.
